An indoor-only cat, I think you are referring to, don’t tend to wander far from home, at least right away, out of fear.

Also several human-related interferences can alter the distance the cat is from home entirely. If someone saw the cat while driving by or found it injured, or it got into a vehicle, it could be anywhere if they drove off with it. The same applies if your lost cat was believed to be a ‘stray’ and someone trapped it or took it and brought it to a shelter or decided to keep it without looking for its family.

There are microchipped cats that have been found over a decade after going missing, several countries or even continents over, that got into shipping crates, or got taken by someone who later moved overseas, where they then somehow ended up at a shelter where they were luckily scanned, and their family, luckily still reachable through the contact from the chip, then notified and reunited.